The Sun Yat-Sen Cultural Foundation (SYCF) recently announced the recipients of the 2012 Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Award for Academic Achievement, both recipients are NTHU professors: Dr. Shu-chin Liu of Institute of Taiwan Literature and Dr. Yuh-Ju Sun of the Department of Life Sciences.

Prof. Shu-chin Liu won the Award with her impressive research accomplishments and publications. She indicated that her motivation to write The Road of Thorns is to rediscover the activities of Taiwanese intellectuals during the colonial period; to expound Taiwanese writers' collective desire for civil liberties and national freedom and cultural development. Prof. Liu demonstrated that Taiwanese students who studied in Japan during the last century were instrumental in bringing modern knowledge back to Taiwan. From the late 19^th century to the early 20^th century, students from China, South Korea, and Taiwan flocked to Japan to study and such a phenomenon has shaped the cultural and academic landscapes of East Asia. Studying in Japan, however, was a complex process combining a pilgrimage in search of knowledge, cultural learning, reflection and criticism of Japanese colonialism. For Taiwanese intellectuals, it was their goal to raise the educational level of their fellow citizens, and bring back new knowledge to struggle against the colonial system imposed on Taiwan. The Road of Thorns is a book based on the second generation of Taiwanese students traveling to Japan during the Showa Era. They arrived in Tokyo in the 1930s and were greatly inspired by the political activism of the Taisho Era. These students returned to Taiwan and started to support a Taiwanese cultural revolution in the 1940s, and the effects of that movement lasted after the end of World War II.

Professor Shu-chin Liu expressed her gratitude to the judges at the SYCF, and Linking Publishing. She believes that writers who have sacrificed their youth and even their lives to promote Taiwan literature and culture were what touched the judges. She is donating half of her award to the Bliss and Wisdom Cultural Foundation to fund their project in building the Bliss and Wisdom Religious Seminary, and the other half to the NTHU Fulfillment Scholarship to thank her alma mater and mentors for their guidance and inspiration.

Prof. Yuh-Ju Sun's fields of expertise are in X-ray diffraction, crystallography, structural biology, protein chemistry, and computer simulation. She thanked the Sun Yat-Sen Cultural Foundation for this recognition. Her research project was completed by a team of Taiwanese researchers, mainly composed of faculty and students in the College of Life Sciences at NTHU. The results of their study have been published in the internationally renowned journal ^Nature this year. Prof. Sun stated that this award is a proof of the ability of Taiwan's researchers and will inspire and encourage young researchers.

Prof. Sun expressed her gratitude to Prof. Rong-Long Pan for leading the research team in completing this "mission impossible". She would also like to extend her appreciation to the entire research team, her colleagues at NTHU and National Science Council for their encouragement and support, as well as to her students' undying passion for research and their persistence.

Prof. Sun indicated "this honor given to my team is an honor given to NTHU and Taiwanese researchers." She also expressed her gratitude to her family for their continuous support, especially her husband, Prof. Chwan-Deng Hsiao, for being her best partner and workmate. "I couldn't have done it without his support and understanding."